by Jolie Moore
“That sounds like it solved the problem,” Lucas said.
William shook his head. “I was kind of hard headed back in those days.”
“There was another girl in Hawaii. She was off base this time. But I was pretty sure I’d made a big mistake. I’d gone against my parents’ advice. I’d married and run away with a guy I hadn’t known well enough. I’d dropped out of college. And given what had happened in Norfolk and what was happening in Kauai, I didn’t think there was a future. I’d grown up in an in-tact family, a huge extended family. I wanted the idyllic life I thought my parents had. Sitting in soul-sucking base housing, pregnant and crying, waiting to see if my husband came home smelling like another woman was not how I’d imagined my future…my life.”
“But you didn’t want adoption, right Will?” Nicolette piped in.
That was news to me. “I thought both parents had to agree,” I said, not letting William off the hook as easily as his new fiancé.
Everyone turned to look at William. “I signed the papers before I shipped off to Korea.”
Laura’s eyes pierced William. “You didn’t want to sign the papers? You never told me that.”
William shrugged. “I did. But you’d walked in on me and Aolani and I don’t think either one of us heard much of what the other’d said.”
Laura sat back. Stunned didn’t quite cover it. She looked as if she were reconsidering a bunch of choices she’d made in her life. “But you went to Korea without me. You said you’d send for me when you got settled but never did.”
“You said you needed time and space. I gave that to you.”
“You were distant when you came back to San Diego.”
“I grew up without my parents, Laura. I thought my COs were my parents, fellow sailors my brothers. I didn’t know what it was to have a wife or a family. I figured I’d fucked it up way too much. I wanted you to have the life you should have had before I met you at the Red Fox.”
“You remember the name of the bar?”
“I’ll never forget it. I tried to reach for something I didn’t deserve and it smacked me in the face.”
That seemed as good a time as any to collect plates. All this emotion made me very uncomfortable in my own skin. I felt transparent like everyone could see through me. Except for Nicolette who was holding on to William for dear life, like he might slip through her fingers any second.
I passed dessert around the table. Everyone dug into the tiramisu-like ladyfingers were a refuge. Small talk resumed. Nicolette excused herself to go downstairs to get a better cell signal. Something was happening with her daughter that she needed to attend to right away. She was probably as uncomfortable as I was for an entirely different reason. When I turned back from giving Nicolette directions, William and Laura were leaning across the table, talking in low tones. Maybe they were catching up on what had happened in the thirty plus years they’d been apart.
I goosed Lucas from his chair. “Why don’t you help me in the kitchen?” I suggested.
He reluctantly followed me the few feet from the dining room table to the counter. “Do you think they could get back together?” Lucas asked, inclining his head toward the two people at the table. His biological parents’ hands had crept across the broad expanse of walnut and had met in the middle. It was a very sweet picture. One that I was immensely glad that Lucas had gotten to see. I wondered if Lucas and I would meet like that one day. Nah, we’d go our separate ways sooner rather than later. Other than this time in our lives where we shared secrets, there wouldn’t be much holding us together. No strings from the past. I shook my head. Didn’t want to dwell on the end of us just yet.
Lucas took my shake of the head as an answer to his question. I schooled my face. “I think Nicolette would put a stop to that,” I said. “She seemed very possessive.”
“She’d be his third wife. The way they told the story, Laura sounded like his first love.”
I almost said, first love doesn’t last. God knows I’d heard the phrase a thousand times. But in my heart of hearts, I knew that wasn’t true. I’d still be married to Andrew to this day if fate hadn’t intervened. Instead I said, “Sounds like they have a lot to catch up on.”
When Nicolette came back, I called a car and shuttled them off to one of those single letter boutique hotels popping up everywhere. Both Lucas and I hugged Laura, William, and even Nicolette hard.
Easing off my high heeled pumps, I propped my feet up on Lucas’ couch when we got back upstairs. The whole evening had exhausted me more than a morning of sample sale shopping.
“Are you staying?” Lucas asked. He lifted my legs as he eased himself down on the couch and laid my feet across his thighs.
I tried not to let the question tense me up. I’d made my peace with the temporary nature of our relationship. We were definitely lovers and maybe friends who had gotten into a complicated thing together. Relationship wasn’t even the right word, not in the way people used it now. “Do you want me to stay?” I asked. We were both playing an ambivalent game. I’d blinked first before. Laid my heart out there only to face the ultimate rejection. Now that I knew everything was time limited, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for him to decide I wasn’t worthy of his time. Waiting for the time I’d have to figure out the way to start act two of my life.
“Of course I want you to stay,” he said. He took one of my feet in his hands, pressing his thumb against my arch. I bit back a groan. The silence grew as he massaged one foot, then the other. Part of me wanted to pull him down on top of me. Kiss him. Make love to him. But another part wanted to push him away. End the pain his inevitable absence was going to cause. Sooner rather than later would be better. I could start getting over the pain faster.
Mentally obliterating all thoughts of the future, I asked him, “Were you satisfied with the answers you got tonight?”
His hands stilled. It was a long time before he nodded. His eyes didn’t meet mine, though. “I think so, yes.”
Finally, I thought. I asked, “Have you called your family in Vermont?”
“No, but I should do that,” he said, talking to the wall across the room. “They’ve been with me through everything. I wouldn’t want them to think I don’t love them.”
“Do you forgive Laura and William?” I asked. “I think they were a couple of young kids who bit off more than they could chew.”
Finally, he turned toward me and said, “The situation was more complicated than I thought.”
“I think it always has to be.”
“It sounds like he probably had a hard childhood. Maybe he was still running away from his demons.”
“You said she’d walked in on him. She saw this fight. She watched the father of her child fly out of the country after your adoption. Maybe he wasn’t ready to be a father. Laura picked up on that reticence before she was that statistical welfare mom fighting to make ends meet.”
Lucas nodded like he understood. “If they’d talked it out? If she’d enlisted the support of her family…”
“It could have worked, Lucas. William could have grown up. Laura’s family could have stepped in. None of that happened. Reality isn’t a movie of the week or a Nicholas Sparks novel. There’s no riding off into the sunset or happily ever after. Life is messy and hard. And sometimes the choices are forever.”
Done talking, I pulled Lucas’ mouth to mine. I wove my fingers in the curls at the nape of his neck. When I pulled back, desire sparked in his eyes. I closed mine and pressed my face into his neck. I inhaled that mixture of soap, aftershave, and man that was all him. I bit at his neck, soothing the red mark with my tongue. I kissed the stubble along his jaw expressly to push away the inevitable: the end of us.
With a stone cold certainty I knew Lucas would never forgive me because I could never forgive myself. He was right. He was inevitably, inexorably right. I’d made the wrong choice eleven years, three months, and six days ago. And there wasn’t a single thing I could do about it.
Chapter 30
Lucas
The baggage claim carousel spun lazily when I approached. For an unguarded moment, I looked at Matthew Tucker, the man who raised me. He was sitting, legs crossed, wool pants leg lifted to reveal mismatched socks. Even from over here, I could tell the socks were knit from mom’s hand-dyed yarn stash. Probably leftovers from school. I’d had many a pair during my life.
I looked down at the generic Macy’s socks I was wearing and regretted not pulling something of Mom’s from the drawer before I’d boarded the plane.
“Dad!” I called and strode over to the bank of chairs against the wall.
“Surprised you still call me that,” he said.
That hurt. A lot. “You and Mom will always be my parents. You know that,” I said, pulling him up and in for a hug. He remained stiff in my arms.
“That your bag?” he asked, pointing to my black weekend bag slowly turning on the black rubber pads.
Reluctantly, I let go of him and went to retrieve my bag. He jingled his keys and led the way to the parking lot. “New car?” I asked, pointing to the shiny new Subaru.
He nodded, squinting at the key fob and jabbing at buttons. The rear of the Forrester popped open. I placed my bag in the empty trunk and helped myself into the passenger seat.
“Looks like there are some upgrades from my Outback,” I said.
My dad made a big show of looking at the map on the screen and weaving through the speeding Boston traffic. I should have offered to drive. If Los Angeles had given me one thing, it was a crash course in traffic navigation. “Dad, you want me to drive?” I offered in the middle of six lanes of traffic.
“I can still do that, Lucas,” he said nearly sideswiping a van.
I shut up and let him drive. In a few minutes we were in New Hampshire. Once we got past that initial crush of suburban traffic, things quieted down. My dad stopped white knuckling the steering wheel.
“You thinking of retiring?” I asked. Seemed like he shouldn’t be out commuting on snowy or icy roads. Maybe he and Mom could sell their big house and move to a condo in Concord or Boston. Something safer than small town Vermont a good drive from anywhere.
“I’m not quite ready to put one foot in the grave,” he said. His tone did not invite further discussion.
I pulled my phone from my jacket pocket and fiddled with it. No call from Nari. I wondered if she’d received the note I’d stuck to the back of her office chair. In a post-coital haze we’d talked about driving up to Ojai for the weekend. Maybe tasting wine, cozying up in a big king-size bed away from intrusions from her parents in her apartment or the memory of my birth ones in mine.
But before I could indulge in that kind of hedonism, I needed to square things back here. I’d left a post it stuck to her chair because I didn’t want to tell her face-to-face that I was putting my tail between my legs. That I realized I probably needed to apologize to my parents. I snuck a look at my dad. He didn’t look quite as unhappy as when I’d first met him in the airport, but his lips were still pinched. Little white lines etched his mouth, face, brow.
“How’s your book coming?” I asked when the road emptied after the 495 and Dad’s hands further eased their grip on the steering wheel.
“I may not finish this one,” he said. That was news. Dad was as dedicated as anyone to social history. He’d proudly taken up the cause of students and adults knowing what had come before them. Not repeating those mistakes. Learning from the victories and defeats. He’d given all of us that same speech hundreds of times. I may have majored in biology, but I’d minored in history at his insistence.
“Why not? It’s always been important to you.”
“I think Howard Zinn has it covered,” he said. “His people’s history has sold thousands of copies—to lay people.”
“But doesn’t he have more of a slant?” My father had scrupulously stressed objectivity.
“Oh, nothing’s unbiased anymore. I used to think I was the objective voice of history. Me, a privileged white man living in an enclave of people just like me. What do I know?” He paused for a long time as he maneuvered through the increased traffic around Manchester and Concord. “Did you read any of those Naomi Klein books I gave you?”
I thought about the thick paper wrapped hardcovers on the shelf in my home office. Between finding my parents and negotiating whatever I had with Nari, reading hadn’t been on the top of my list. If I’d been at home or in New York, it would have been. Even if I hadn’t had the time, I would have read it because I loved him and wanted to support him. It’s what our family did. He’d read every paper—horrible and not so—that I’d written throughout high school and college. He’d come to every game, every parents weekend for all three of us kids.
“I’ve been busy,” I said, trying not to let the guilt eat me alive. I had an entire weekend ahead of me. If I let it start out like this, I’d never make it.
“I thought you were down to four days now,” he said, glancing at me, then the road.
“Watch out!” I yelled as a deer darted across the road. Dad swerved hard, but was able to correct himself in time. Before we were off in the berm, waiting for a tow truck. When the adrenaline cleared from my bloodstream, we were nearing the Vermont border. I’d have a talk with Mom before the weekend was over. Dad didn’t seem quite himself on the road anymore. He’d never been an aggressive driver, but at least I remembered him confident. Was it age or was it me?
Had I made my own father nervous? I was his son. He’d known me nearly since birth. Determined to remove whatever stress my being here was causing him, I settled back in my seat and stayed quiet. My head turned toward the window and I took in the passing landscape, the remaining miles to home.
I’d missed this. Tall thick maples, pines, greenery. There wasn’t much I liked about the desert landscape of California, except driving through it with Nari.
The house was warm when I scraped off my shoes and headed in through the mud door. My mom, the woman whose lap I’d lived in for the first few years of my life, was vigorously mixing something on the counter. My nose picked it up before my brain could register the smells of home.
Mom dropped the spoon and came over to hug me. She was a small person with a mighty grip.
“My love,” she whispered in my ear like she used to before I fell asleep in my room as a child. Before she dimmed the hallway lights and left my door open a crack.
I cleared my throat of the emotion that overwhelmed me, nearly made me mute. “What’s for dinner?” was all I could push out. I wanted to say, I love you too, Mom. Guilt was like a wad of gum in my throat keeping all the wrong words inside.
“Coconut vegetable curry.” She brushed a hank of hair away from her face with the back of her hand. A smudge of turmeric-dyed sauce landed on her chin. I picked up a kitchen towel from the counter and wiped it away. Not that it made a difference. There were curry stains on her sweater and what looked like dye on the knee of her pants.
“Brooke still a vegetarian?” I asked.
“She’s probably vegan, but I don’t know. She still eats butter and cheese in my casseroles.”
“I need to get my bags,” I said. “Wanted to hug my favorite mom first.”
“I didn’t know if you’d still call me that,” mom said with a quaver in her voice.
I sat heavily on the utilitarian round oak stools I remembered from my earliest days in this house. “Of course I’d call you that. You’re my mom,” I said.
Dad bustled by with my bag in hand. I stood. “I was going to get that. Let me take it upstairs.”
I reached out my hand, but Dad had already walked past and was halfway up the back stairs before I could make my move.
“Would you like some water, maybe a glass of wine?” my mother said in a tone she usually reserved for guests.
“Why are you guys doing this?” I asked. “You’re treating me like I’m not one of the family,” I said.
“You were adopted,” Brooke said
, poking her head in from the study. Undoubtedly, she’d been in there looking at one of those anime comic books she liked so much. The kind she didn’t like to read in front of her New Yorker magazine-reading friends.
The “you’re adopted” joke that had been funny for much of my childhood wasn’t anymore. Where other kids’ brothers and sisters teased them with the idea of being adopted, it was a point of pride in my family. Or it had been. Where other kids didn’t get along, hated their siblings, we’d been a tightly knit threesome because we were so close in age. Because our parents had made sure we didn’t treat anyone differently based on their blood lines. But that bond had been sorely tested last Christmas when I’d finally spoken up about wanting to find my birth parents.
“Why are you freezing me out like this?” I asked. “I’m starting to think that I was right all along. That you’ve merely tolerated me as some interloper to the family. If I make you uncomfortable, I can make my way down to the Village Inn,” I said, bending over to tighten my laces and feeling very, very sorry for myself. I was ready to make the walk if I had to. After that little Brentwood sojourn I was up for anything.
“Maybe that’s not a bad idea,” Brooke said, full body in the kitchen now. Her red and orange dyed hair matched the tiffany lampshade above the kitchen table. There was a time I’d have made fun of her hair colored like the characters she read about and everyone would have laughed good naturedly. But I didn’t dare. Maybe those days were long gone.
“Brooke, that’s uncalled for. Lucas was born before you. He’ll be staying up in his room like always.”
“But he treated you and Dad like you’d done nothing for him.”
“I did not,” I said. “I made a decision to look for my parents…my birth parents. I didn’t do that to hurt Mom and Dad.”
“We understood your decision, Lucas,” Dad said, coming back down the steps empty handed this time.
“Why are you snowing him?” Brooke said. Tact and soft-pedaling had never been her strong suit.